Friday, August 07, 2009

Myth of the Myth of 'Eurabia' ?

One of my favourite writers, Kenan Malik, reviews Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe - yet another 'in a succession of books by authors such as Mark Steyn, Oriana Fallaci, Bruce Bawer and Melanie Phillips warning of how immigration, and in particular Muslim immigration, is threatening the very foundations of European civilization'.

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is trenchantly written and robustly argued. It is complex and often subtle. It is also fundamentally wrong in both premise and conclusion.

Can't say fairer than that, can you ? Which is presumably why Shiraz Socialist described it as "an excellent point-by-point refutation of the claims made by migration scaremongers", those claims being "the ‘Muslims! Everywhere! EVERYWHERE!’ nonsense" - and on that basis I prepared to take it apart - but, as you might expect from Malik, it turns out to be a bit more complicated than that and there's a lot of detail on which Malik is right and Caldwell wrong. FWIW, I think both Malik and Caldwell (at least as presented by Malik) have got some things wrong or assigned the wrong level of importance to them.

Three basic arguments underlie Caldwell’s thesis. First, postwar immigration to Europe has, he believes, been fundamentally different to previous waves of immigration. Prior to the Second World War, immigrants came almost exclusively from other European nations, and so were easily assimilable. Indeed, ‘using the word immigration to describe intra-European movements makes only slightly more sense than describing a New Yorker as an “immigrant” to California’. The cultural apartness of postwar immigrants, on the other hand, has not just posed problems of assimilation but also undermined the very fabric of European societies. Take away colonial guilt, Caldwell suggests, and ‘the fundamental difference between colonization and labor migration ceases to be obvious’.

Second, Caldwell argues that Muslim migration in particularly has been akin to a form of colonization. ‘Since its arrival half a century ago’, Caldwell observes, ‘Islam has broken – or required adjustments to, or rearguard defences of – a good many of the European customs, received ideas and state structures with which it has come in contact.’ Islam ‘is not enhancing or validating European culture; it is supplanting it.’

And third, Caldwell suggests that Islam’s success has been made easier by a crisis of identity of identity in the West. Europeans, in particular, ‘are coming to despise their own cultures, much as the bigots among their forebears had despised the cultures of other peoples.’ Immigration, Caldwell points out, ‘enhances strong countries and cultures but it can overwhelm weak ones’ – and that is what is happening to Europe.

Let's take Malik's 'point-by-point refutation' one point at a time. While Caldwell and Malik are talking about Europe, I prefer to concentrate on the UK - because that's where my children are growing up. Foreigners begin at Calais.

According to Caldwell, prewar immigration between European nations was different from postwar immigration from outside Europe because ‘immigration from neighboring countries does not provoke the most worrisome immigration questions, such as “How well will they fit in?” “Is assimilation what they want?” and, most of all, “Where are their true loyalties?”.’ In fact, those were the very questions asked of European migrants in the prewar years ... One of the consequences of postwar migration has been to create historical amnesia about prewar attitudes.

Well, I'd say on that last point the 'historical amnesia' is the byproduct of the 'nation of immigrants' liberal myth. After all, we welcomed immigrants in the past, didn't we ?

There's a fine quote in Peter Hitchens' 'Abolition of Britain' showing the attitudes of even an educated, left-wing Brit to 'abroad' - and particularly Europe - in the 1930s. Having made the point that Empire ensured many Brits were widely travelled outside of Europe (admittedly their view was often from the butt-end of a rifle) , he quotes the protagonist, a travelling salesman, of a 1937 novel by the thriller-writer Eric Ambler, at the time an anti-Fascist and Soviet sympathiser :

"People come over here for a fortnight's holiday and see a lot of pretty chalets and chateaux and schloesser and say what a fine place it is to live in. They don't know what they're talking about. They only see the top coat. They don't see the real differences. They don't see behind the scenes... I was in sunny Italy when the fascisti went for the Freemasons in twenty-five. Florence it was. Night after night of it with shooting and beating and screams, until you felt like vomiting. I was in Vienna in thirty-four when they turned the guns on the municipal flats with the women and children inside them... I saw the Paris riots with the garde mobile shooting down the crowd like flies and everyone howling 'mort au vaches' like lunatics. I saw the Nazis in Frankfurt ...

In Hitchens' phrase 'Britain is the only virgin in a continent of rape victims'

You don't have to go back to the Gordon Riots (which to be fair, were as much anti-Catholic English as anti-foreigner) or the St Brice's day massacre to find these attitudes to immigrants. Here's that well-known social historian Thomas Hardy, writing about 1804 :

'He took from his pocket a piece of the single newspaper which circulatedin the county in those days, and she read--

"The magistrates acting under the Alien Act have been requestedto direct a very scrutinizing eye to the Academies in our townsand other places, in which French tutors are employed, and to allof that nationality who profess to be teachers in this country.Many of them are known to be inveterate Enemies and Traitors tothe nation among whose people they have found a livelihoodand a home."

'He continued: "I have observed since the declaration of war a marked difference in the conduct of the rougher class of people here towards me.

Hmm. That public notice wasn't exactly in the spirit of the Government responses to 9/11 and 7/7, was it ? Similarly the Irish influx to the mainland was greeted with hostility - yet they (mostly - a few were still inveterate enemies) integrated - to the point where they themselves were hostile to newcomers. From Robert Roberts' classic A Ragged Schooling, Salford :

Syd's father, in his teens, had been a well-known 'scuttler' - one of the gangs of hooligans who, in the nineties, infested northern slums... for a time, the activities of this gang (Cope Street) gained even national repute. Mr Carey, once a leader there, now looked upon himself as a model citizen. But in his cups at the street corner, drivelling over 'happy days', he would tell of 'how we stopped them bloody ****'. A Jewish dealer, we heard, had opened a second-hand clothes shop in the district, only to see his goods pulled out onto the pavement and burned openly by scuttlers, while a policeman stood by to see fair play. 'That kept 'em out ! We got no more of the buggers ! He felt he had performed a social service.

What of those outside 'the rougher class ?' As I've written before of the early 20th century , "the exotic (but relatively tiny) immigrant quarters of London, with their Jews, Russians, Letts and seafaring communities provided colour for a generation of crime and adventure writers, from Dorothy L Sayers to Dornford Yates" (in America similar immigrants inspired fiction like Lovecraft's The Street). As late as 1962, Paul Gallico is writing (in Scruffy, set in WW2) of upper-class Englishmen who don't want their babies delivered by 'that Jewish fellow' - an eminent gynaecologist.

So I take Malik's point - that suspicion of foreigners, even those as physically close as the French, has a long history in Britain. But I would agree with Caldwell that post-war immigration is fundamentally different, while disagreeing with him on the nature of the difference - on grounds of scale - the numbers - rather than of nature.

However Caldwell's Point 1 also impacts on and is impacted by his Point 3 - the cultural collapse. The more-or-less aggressive, suspicious attitude of pre-60s Brits to foreigners was a reflection of a self-confident culture which has almost vanished among educated natives. What is the character of current immigration, Caldewell and Malik might have inquired, if the demoralised, decultured Brits can be brought to the point where they are still asking the questions their self-confident forebears asked ?

Malik seems to skip straight past Point 2 - that Muslim immigration has been akin to a form of colonisation. Instead he takes a pop at "the claim that Islam poses a fundamental threat to Western values" - an interesting subject, but not the one a point by point refutation would address, so let me just link to the Bradford experience (emboldening is mine) :

The first generation of immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh came here as "immigrants". They came expecting and wanting to integrate to some extent into the existing community. The collection of photographs taken of the first generation by the photographic studio in Manningham Lane illustrates this. The first week’s wages went on a Burtons suit and the men proudly displayed watches, pens and radios, mostly supplied by the photographer.

Immigrants come to a country expecting to change their lifestyles. They can and often do maintain key elements of their culture for generations, particularly their religion, but in many ways they adopt the dominant culture in such aspects as work, dress, leisure, housing and family composition... however, this process seems to be thrown into reverse in Bradford. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities now expect to recreate the environment of their country of origin. They have settled in village patterns which reflect their origins and they constantly reinforce this by bringing in new members from the country of origin. This, in turn, leads to spatial and social immobility, communities which are internalised on themselves and are relatively self-sufficient in social and cultural terms although reliant in many ways on the economic and government resourced infrastructure.

This of course is also related to Point 3 - the collapse of self-confidence in the host culture. As I pointed out in the linked post, it's no coincidence that the change from immigrants to colonists coincided with the collapse of the host culture's self-confidence.

On Western values, Malik again has a point.

‘What secular Europeans call “Islam”’, he (Caldwell - LT) points out, ‘is a set of values that Dante and Erasmus would recognize as theirs’. On the other hand, the modern, secular rights that now constitute ‘core European values’ would ‘leave Dante and Erasmus bewildered.’ There is, in other words, no single set of 'European values' that transcends history in opposition to Islamic values.

Now I don't pretend to know much about Dante or Erasmus, but I'd agree that our grandparents and great-grandparents would in many areas find their values (examples here) expressed better in the mosque than in the Guardian or on the BBC (I'd also agree that outside the single important exception of Christianity, there's not historically been a huge amount of commonality between the values of Europeans over the last 200 years). "The average middle-class Labour activist and the average Ibrahim in the mosque are 180% apart on social issues." But again, that comes down to the cultural collapse - aka Caldwell's point 3 - which has at its heart the decline of Christianity. The current confusion about values is because - well, because there's confusion about values. The moral putsch of the cultural revolution stands on very shaky foundations.

Point 2 never really got addressed. Point 3 :

"He is right."

Huzzah ! Caldwell, Malik and Laban agree ! But :

But it is an argument that sits uneasily with claims about the inherent cultural apartness of Third World and Muslim immigrants. Many immigrants want to join the club, Caldwell seems to be saying, but they can’t because the club has lost its rulebook.

This explains the immense difficulty the government has with drawing up guidelines for immigrants. The exercise of trying to tell immigrants how to be British is becoming an embarrassing demonstration of the fact that the elite doesn't know itself.

And why don't they know ? Because the cultural revolution destroyed the existing common culture while not replacing it. There's little shared culture any more - just lots and lots of cultures, some co-existing, some competing. There is one overarching national culture - the culture of our liberal elite, of the grown-up suburban revolutionaries - perhaps that of Kenan Malik - but it is extremely fragile, and is aware of the fact. That awareness is why school bus drivers get sacked in Bradford for being BNP members.

Malik throws in this criticism :

Caldwell clearly thinks that Europe cannot be the same with different people in it. But in asking the question Caldwell confuses the diversity of peoples and the diversity of values. People of North African or South Asian parentage, he seems to believe, will inevitably cleave to a different set of values than those of European ancestry. Why? Being born to European parents is no passport to Enlightenment beliefs. So why should we imagine that having Bangladeshi or Moroccan ancestry makes one automatically believe in sharia?

which IMHO is a bit of a straw man. While Islam is a religion not a race, the vast majority of Muslims in the UK are brown-skinned people whose forbears (and often marriage partners) hail from Bangladesh or Pakistan - which is what enables people to shout 'racist' when Islam is criticised. My view is that social cohesion is simply made that much more difficult when culture and ethnicity are so closely aligned. To be fair, plenty of people are similarly 'confused' :

MY MUSLIM PRIDEI WILL NT HIDEMY PAKISTANI RACEI WIL NT DISGRASE

It's Malik's last paragraph that's key to the whole thing :

There are no such things as ‘European values’, of course. What has eroded is faith in the idea that it is possible to win peoples of different backgrounds to a common set of secular, humanist, Enlightened values. And that is the real problem: not immigration, nor Muslim immigration, but the lack of conviction in a progressive, secular, humanist project.

For him, the 'cultural collapse' to be worried about is not the revolution (paralleled to a greater or lesser extent throughout the advanced capitalist nations) in British thought since the 1960s. Dr Malik's formative political years were the years of counterculture triumph - the Thatcher years when the cultural war of the 'left' was won as surely as the economic wars of the left were lost. He's an intelligent, widely read man - surely he can't think it's always been that way here.

And that's where we part on the diagnosis. For left apostate Laban, the years after the cultural revolution are an interregnum (see this post), not the natural order of things . There's not IMHO a cat in hell's chance that 'a progressive, secular, humanist project' can build the sort of society which people are willing to die to defend - unless you think Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia were such societies. What we currently have is best described in Caldwell's words - fear masquerading as tolerance. Unless the physical changes - the medical advances, contraception, labour-saving machines of the last sixty-odd years - have triggered a fundamental change in human mentality, the lesson of history is surely that such societies will fall.

Just listened to this programme refuting claims that Europe is on the way to Islamification, based on stats quoted in a YouTube video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lxh3t

Now why would the BBC devote a large part of a Radio 4 programme to refuting the claims of one YouTube video? The arguments they cite are based purely on demographic factors - no mention of the disproportionate influence that Muslims have in our society, amongst other things.

Malik's whole article is another specious set of ad hominems of which we have come to expect the immigration apologist cranks.

"There are no such things as ‘European values’, of course. What has eroded is faith in the idea that it is possible to win peoples of different backgrounds to a common set of secular, humanist, Enlightened values. And that is the real problem: not immigration, nor Muslim immigration, but the lack of conviction in a progressive, secular, humanist project."

*spit*

Just two points about that evil paragraph.

1. The phrase "Enlightenment Values" has no intellectual pre-history at all. It's a hard left, politically correct canard. There is no such thing as Enlightenment Values as much as there is no such as it's vaguely right-wing twin "European Values". There is such a thing as Ethnos, which will form the core of opposition to Islamization, as it was in Serbia. But this is censured as "racism" and Serbia was subjected to a "humanitarian bombing campaign".

2. "but the lack of conviction in a progressive, secular, humanist project."

The key word there is conviction, they want you to believe and obey another religion, the religion of Secular Humanism. A self defeating public/secualr religion. Ironically it permits the advance of Islam, because how enlightened is it to prevent the building of Mosques? Which means Islamisation will go on as normal.

Although I come to a similar conclusion, I approach things from a very different perspective.

I firmly believe that the indigenous people of Britain have an EXTREMELY STRONG culture. My Asian wife

strongly agrees, and it helps to be able to see the UK and its people from the outside, looking in.

British white people strongly believe in a sense of national community - almost absent in Asia where a sense

of "family" easily surpasses any concerns of "community". British white people also have a strong sense of

"rights" and "justice" of which freedom of speech and individual freedom are held in high regard. The

political elite may not believe in such things - but the British people do.

It is important to remember that the first wave of immigration - from the West Indies - very much softened

us up for following waves of immigration.

Blacks from the West Indies are from a predominantly Christian background and are not so very different from

us. They can an do assimilate - although not always, as sometimes they prefer to create their own

sub-cultures, but these sub-cultures seem ephemeral. Certainly it seems that the black community are more

prone to crime than the white community - but that is not to say that the white community is without

problems in this regard and the problems of criminality can be dealt with regardless of colour. The immigration of blacks caused a furious backlash - but as white people we were ultimately asked to confront our prejudices in terms of our cultural values "is it right to be nasty to black people just because of the colour of their skin?". The answer was a clear "no", and so the concept of "allowing people to be black" became part of Britain's natural tolerance of people's right to be different.

Before the immigration of blacks from the West-Indies we had WWII and the exposure of the horrors of the

holocaust. This called upon the people of Britain to question their own attitudes to people with "foreign"

beliefs, particularly with regard to Jews, but also more generally to the indigenous people of the colonies.

So these two events softened us up to the idea that black people and people with different beliefs should be

allowed to live side by side with White Christian and White Atheists without hindrance, and this view was

underpinned in the values we share in tolerance as a people since the time of William of Orange. And why

not? Fundamentally the values and beliefs of the vast majority of Jewish and black people do not conflict

with the values and beliefs of white people. One can argue ratinbally against immigration from the standpoint of over-population and damage to the environment and quality of life due to high population densities, but not logically from a standpoint of racism and anti-semitism.

But these two events certainly softened us up for the next wave of immigration. If we could make room for

those of a different religion, and those of a different colour, then why not make room for those of a

different colour and a different religion? Easy! Those who oppose such a development were labelled "racists"

and "xenophobes" - an appeal to our shared belief in toleration, and mostly instigated by those that had most to gain by allowing and indeed encouraging such immigration.

So why should we have particular concerns about Muslims, rather than blacks or Jews? Because we perceive that they do not share our belief in toleration. We perceive that they would change our nation - or more accurately the nation of our children, in a way that neither we nor our children would appreciate. Then they planted bombs on trains and cheered when many were killed and proved to us beyond doubt that they did not share our values and beliefs and never would.

Our basic human value of tolerance is actually being forcefully confronted by aggressive intolerance. What is the only viable response to this? Rolling-over seems to be the short-term approach but in the long-term the only viable response is that the tolerant become INTOLERANT. But this is so hard for us to do. We actually have to challenge a fundamental part of what it actually means to be British, a fundamental part of our OWN PERSONAL VALUES that we have grown up with as a natural part of being British.

Now, I have noticed things that have changed - more people my age are openly declaring themselves to be Christian, and more are going to church. I think this is part of the re-adjustment of people's value-systems. The decline in CofE attendences has slowed to a near standstill, and will very likely reverse in the next few years as the demographics shift in favour of the new Christians. They are re-aligning themselves around Christianity as part of their culture rather than post-Enlightenment philosophy. Maybe this is partly fuelled by the growing challenge from Islam - I have a suspicion that they are waiting for a new Ian Paisley. There was nothing like the challenge from Protestantism for putting a rocket under Catholicism and I'm guessing that the challenge of Islam will fire up a fervent belief in militant Christianity.

At the same time people are making more and more open anti-Islam statements and more anti-immigration comments. They are re-aligning their actual views on "tolerance" around the concept of shared beliefs and values. Only those that are "tolerant" can be "tolerated" in our new world view. Islam must be fought the way Nazism was fought, and very often Islam is being equated with Nazism and Facism and for good reason.

The BNP for its part has recognised that people's real concerns are aligned to culture and beliefs - and in particular the tendency of certain immigrants to be intolerant of the values and beliefs of the majority.

However, for the BNP it is too late - they are too tainted with the madness of racism and anti-semitism to ever gain true popularity. I suspect they will be superceded by a new fervently anti-immigration/anti-islam party inspired by European anti-immigration/anti-islam parties.

And when none of that works - the people most angered by the rise of Islam in the UK will rise up and burn down the houses of the people of Islam - while the police watch on and do nothing. Just like Northern Ireland - only bigger.

I believe these things to be both inevitable and likely fairly imminent - certainly they are likely to happen in our lifetimes. It is fascinating to watch as it all unfolds, because such things have happened so often before. We Brits have often condemned those foreigners for their lack of toleration of others - and yet we are now likely to follow the same path.

By the way I see the BBC are keen to debunk the "myth of the rise of Islam":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8189231.stm

However, a rise of 300,000 to 1.6million in just 20 years is a 5 fold increase over that period. That means a rate of growth resulting in 8million Muslims by 2021 Which means that Muslims would easily hold the balance of power by that time - and hold the door open for further immigration. By 2041 they would number 40million - and easily outnumber the declining number of whites. That is just 30 years away on this trend rate of growth. Sure, these numbers could prove innacurate as trends change - but the momentum might actually be in the direction of faster change rather than slower as we have seen in the US with Hispanics being a powerful force holding the door open for further mass immigration with the white majority becoming a minority with depressing inevitability. The 2011 census may not prove much - many Muslims may decline to answer the question on religion, invoking the principle of taqqiya, as the inevitable backlash towards the growth of Islam might be forestalled by keeping the invasion a quiet one.

In the 50s we were told that immigrants would only stay for a few years and then return home -- and to be fair most of the immigrants intended to do so.

In the 60s and 70s when it became clear that many of the immigrants were staying, the establishment insisted that after a few years they would be thoroughly integrated, indistinguishable from the average Briton except for perhaps skin colour.

In the 80s it became increasingly obvious that no such integration was taking place, and thus the concept of "multiculturalism" was created. In effect this turned the problem of non-integration into a "good thing" which was to be welcomed. In a wonderful bit of Orwellian newspeak, a problem became a benefit.

It is the last lie that is the most damaging and dangerous of all. By redefining a problem as a benefit, it encouraged it to be built on. More immigration, more tensions, less community spirit, more ghettoisation, even groups now dedicated to the overthrow of our liberal democracy, and prepared to use violence. All simply dismissed in the name of multiculturalism. Even to the point where we had the then Labour Minister Margaret Hodge blithely stating that "immigration is good because it increases diversity" - no other justification needed apparently.

Shame Hodege never read Putnam on diversity. A liberal academic who has actually studied and proved what many people I'm sure instinctively know.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/The downside of diversityA Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?

IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite.

I certainly hope that neither I nor my children see a day when "the people most angered by the rise of Islam in the UK will rise up and burn down the houses of the people of Islam". 'Twould be a disgusting crime.

Given events in Bradford, Oldham, Burnley a few years back the reverse does seem more likely.

"One can argue ratinbally against immigration from the standpoint of over-population and damage to the environment and quality of life due to high population densities, but not logically from a standpoint of racism and anti-semitism."

Actually you can do both and the more coherent posters over at majorityrights.com do this by referencing 'Culture of Critique' by Kevin McDonald and 'On Genetic Interests' by Frank Salter.

Not that either of these are arguments that I personally promote or ones that particularly motivate me.

My personal journey and investigation of these things was driven by a hatred of political correctness.

Nevertheless, they make arguments that are difficult to refute.

As far as I am aware nobody has taken apart McDonald's 'Culture of Critique' and I find it difficult to fault Frank Salter's 'On Genetic Interests' other than how could anyone implement that without a totalitarian state. Diversity is great, lets preserve it seems to be all that drive Frank Salter.

Its kind of funny to watch Labans Talls blog develop its own version of political correctness.

However, for the BNP it is too late - they are too tainted with the madness of racism and anti-semitism - Anon the 1st.

Beep! Is the wrong answer. You blew your cover there pal.

You take the arch left/liberal assumption that racism and anti-semitism are purely psychological conditions. Remember in the USSR dissidents were declared mad, they had to be or else how could they disagree with the ruling ideology? In other words through tolerance and re-education the mad and moronic natives can be conditioned into proper thinking.

In effect you're still selling us the whole left/liberal program and there is no solving our problems now from within that paradigm. We are decades past that stage. Maybe in '68 (you know why I chose that date of course) if people with clout had said "enough is enough, close the borders". We could have assimiltaed small minorities and kept our cosy liberalism. Way too late for that now mate, way too late.

Power is its own right. The only right is the right of the strong. The strong are always right - if they demand something, give it to them. Do not fight those stronger than you, no matter the cause or circumstance. Yesterday doesn't matter, tomorrow is far away, the only thing that matters is now. You want something, take it. Take it today.

Laban mentions above that the Left have lost the "economic wars", but won the "culture wars" of the past few decades.

True, but how did they manage it? Paradoxically, through economics. Since the 1960's, the Left have got themselves into entrenched positions at the soft end of the public sector -- the BBC, the subsidised arts, the educationist lobby, quangoes and fake charities, and so on.

All of these exist, not by popular demand, but because they get handouts from the taxpayer.

The answer is to abolish the tax handouts, and they will either disappear altogether, or will survive only by reflecting the true and traditional values of the British people.

Problems such as multi-culturalism and immigration can then be confronted directly, rather than evaded by Leftist obfuscation and cowardice.

Your comments on Shiraz are intelligent and perceptive (even if I don't agree with them) which is why it was a surprise to see your name at the end of this piece, which goes on for thousands of words without engaging with the issues at all.

We won't go without a fight. When the civil war ensues, tens of millions of Muslims will perish. You can bet on it. Even now I'm working with underground militia groups in Britain, France, Netherlands, and Germany, just waiting for the right moment. Europe will be reduced to a smouldeirng pile of rubble. And whose fault will it be? The blood is on the hands of the Marxists, Muslims, amd Multi-Cultists.+